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Natalia Calaveras (she/her)
24
Lesbian
AKA: Talia
Natalie—errr Talia is determined to find her roommate and close friend, Alex, after the night she goes missing from her apartment. So determined that she actually decides to look for help. Enlisting the help of PI Cat Ryong, she pretty much strongarms the poor woman through the case, overcome with adrenaline, fear, and determination bordering on mania. She tries her best to tread carefully, though. There are certain things that, useful as they may be to the detective, are best kept secret; things like how Alex had gone missing the first time, how she and Talia came to live together, and why Talia acts so...cavalier about the presence of the so-called Crossbones Killer in the county. Cat seems to think it may have something to do with Alex's disappearance. Talia personally doesn't see the connection.
Catherine Ryong (she/her)
33
Bisexual
Private Investigator
AKA: Cat, Kitty-Cat, Kit-Kat
Cat doubts she'll get a new lead on this "Family" business until, strangely, a rude and flamboyant woman finds her office and basically demands her help in finding her missing friend: Alex. Cat is no stranger to these cases, especially since her career was spurred on by a similar tragedy: her parents' murder, her brother's subsequent disappearance. But this case in particular raises an eyebrow; Alex has no friends, no work connections, no family ties save for her estranged parents—essentially, almost no one who knows nor cares where she's gone or what could have happened. The only remaining thread is Alex's aunt: Elise Schröder. Alarm bells. Cat feels she is tantalizingly close to finding out what's taken Alex, and possibly, if she dares to hope, the monster that took her own brother away from her all those years ago.
Alexandra Schröder (she/her)
24
Bisexual
Wielder of the Fallax’s Eye
AKA: Alex, Lexy, Altaris
Alex doesn’t know much about herself. This wasn’t by accident. Her parents, Sonia and Bert, have known there was something different about her since her infancy, and are so terrified of that something coming out that they have effectively locked Alex outside of her own body.
Alex is a shy girl whose “shyness” really goes much deeper than either she or her parents are comfortable confronting. Panic attacks, bouts of aggression, headaches, mind fog, memory loss…it sounds like the symptom soup that comes with something like panic disorder, but what most doctors fail to notice is the supernumerary gland in her brain by her frontal cortex. This gland, the Fallax’s Eye, is an inherited trait that Alex has been conditioned to repress all her life, but its violent power is starting to surface now that Alex has moved out, and beginning to see more and more danger around her every day. If you see her eyes begin to develop an odd yellow shine, it’s best to walk away immediately. You shouldn’t corner a threatened animal like that.
Elise Schröder (she/her)
59
Heterosexual, celibate
Wielder of the Beatific Eye
AKA: The Elder
Elise is missing her daughter, or rather, her best one: the girl who inherited her divine power. Alexandra's value to the Family cannot be overstated, and Elise will go through hell and high water if it means finding her. She envies her brother and his wife for having raised Alexandra themselves, having produced her. At the same time, she resents and relishes that they decided to practically disown her, throw her into the world without a clue of where to go. On the one hand, what a stupid decision when you have such a powerful gift in your hands. What a waste. On the other, what a wonderful opportunity for her to finally be the mother Alex so clearly needs. With her body as altar, the Family will continue after all.
Spoiler-Free Synopsis
After finding that Alex has gone missing from her apartment, Natalie briefly considers that Alex went back on what they'd agreed upon; that she betrayed her. But something isn’t right. Something happened to her. Something took Alex.
She panics. She can’t figure out for the life of her who would have done this, and why, why tonight, how, right under her nose. After a long and difficult period of reasoning, panicking, and haphazardly trying to figure something out on her own as to what happened, she realizes she has practically no leads. Not enough that she could make something of on her own. She needs help.
She finds a private investigator working independently from the police (the last thing she wants right now is to start a case ON HER NAME). The PI in question: Catherine Ryong. Natalie approaches her with Alex’s disappearance, disguising herself under the name “Talia,” and Ryong is interested. After some digging and conversation, she connects this disappearance to a group she’s encountered before—a group she’s been investigating for years: the Family.
Nat and Cat search the state together, as a ragtag pair: investigator and her loose-cannon client who work together about as smoothly as steel and sandpaper. They open up to each other a bit more over their cross-state investigation, and Natalie grapples with having something of a friend, for the first time in years—but she's careful not to get too comfy. One wrong move, one word too many, and Cat will start to suspect some things about her that Natalie does not need on her plate right now.
And where's Alex? ... catching up.
The following paragraphs contain pretty broad, thematic spoilers for the story, but this is not gonna come out in any form for a long time so idk by the time it does you might forget about all of this. do what you want forever. i love you :)
All the stuff that Wonderlands...tacitly?? (I even hesitate to say) dredges up in terms of sensitive themes and content, especially with Max being a victim-turned-agent of the Family's values (Family Values if you will), is brought to full scale in this one. We are not "suggesting" anything we are saying it full stop. The Family is evil lol. I was kind of scared in past years of explicitly making Elise a white supremacist, or eugenicist, for fear of being insensitive or even making the story uninteresting, but the only alternative to that really was just stepping around it in a way that made it kind of awkward. Racism is not like, the "goal" of the Family entirely but it is pretty foundational (even in its indirect ways) to Elise's beliefs and actions. so uh hit send on that (explosion) ptthbbt